The thirty-second poem from my poetry collection Conception.

[More:]

I worry,

like a Catholic committing blasphemy,
if I’m too strict with you, or not enough
discipline, time, attention, energy,
and how do I balance limitless love

when each child deserves all of me always,
not shared fragments of what’s left when cleaning’s
done, one bathed, the other fed and the day’s
smile turned to tired yawn? I count lost meanings

of life, search for the missing equals sign,
ponder how to mend broken scales and then
return weight stolen from each day’s design,
make up lost time with hugs, hope you know, when

you’re grown and mourn the mistakes made with you,
no mother can love how I wanted to.